what to do with 35mm slides!

[albireo13]

Well, I went through my old slides an thinned out a bunch. I threw out hundreds, and have hundreds still left.

I also inherited , last year, my parents' boxes of slides and prints from years gone by. My Dad was into photography as a hobby and kept everything!
After I digitize my slides, I will attack theirs.

I think I will get a scanner nd do it myself. I have a nice flatbed scanner but, that will be too slow for my liking to do all the slides. I will use that for prints.

I was looking at getting the Scanza. Is that the best option?

I am looking for easy and quick scanning, not necessarily professional quality. Otherwise it will become a chore and I know it won't get done. I have two Sibs who are also interested so, I can passed it around after I use it.

 

[Sunset]

Well, I went through my old slides an thinned out a bunch. I threw out hundreds, and have hundreds still left.

I also inherited , last year, my parents' boxes of slides and prints from years gone by. My Dad was into photography as a hobby and kept everything!
After I digitize my slides, I will attack theirs.

I think I will get a scanner nd do it myself. I have a nice flatbed scanner but, that will be too slow for my liking to do all the slides. I will use that for prints.

I was looking at getting the Scanza. Is that the best option?

I am looking for easy and quick scanning, not necessarily professional quality. Otherwise it will become a chore and I know it won't get done. I have two Sibs who are also interested so, I can passed it around after I use it.

The Scanza seems to be very popular. Kodak has another one that is $20 more, but I can't find info that makes it better. Both do the 14/22 MP claim.

You probably spent more time weeding down your collection, than it would have been to scan them with the Scanza. I'm planning to get a Scanza, and just scan everything.

 

[dak2018]

I inherited tons of slides from my parents. After culling the obviously poor shots, I did a quick scan of all of the slides, posted them to Flickr, and notified the family that they are available for viewing.

One problem is that absent any context, the photos do not have much meaning. There are certain pictures of family that I think were appreciated, but the pictures of unknown relatives and landscapes are of no use at all.

Worse, I know that my kids will have zero interest in the vast majority of the photos. They would be better served by inheriting a ruthlessly edited collection of perhaps 100 photos of the family with notations as to who the people are and where the photos were taken.

 

[TriumphTR3fan]

You can either scan them yourselves or have someone do it for you.

Scanning yourself takes a lot of time, while sending them out costs.

Scanmyphotos.com does a pretty good job in my experience.

There’s another good reason to use a service to scan the slides. If you do them it will take much longer because some of them will stir up memories ( positive & negative) & distract you from the actual task. If someone else scans them it will take a small fraction of time, & you can write a narrative for whoever inherits them after you. 100 boxes is a lot of scanning.

 

[albireo13]

I think I might get this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084NVRHYQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?SubscriptionId=AKIAJO7E5OLQ67NVPFZA&ascsubtag=360471056-2-31059645.1637012668&tag=shopperz_origin1-20

 

[dak2018]

I think I might get this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084NVRHYQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?SubscriptionId=AKIAJO7E5OLQ67NVPFZA&ascsubtag=360471056-2-31059645.1637012668&tag=shopperz_origin1-20

Here is the one that I got. I am very satisfied with this scanner:

https://www.amazon.com/Plustek-Opti...B07K2GCRRY,B009PHCWL4,B08TMTXSY1&srpt=SCANNER

 

[dak2018]

There’s another good reason to use a service to scan the slides. If you do them it will take much longer because some of them will stir up memories ( positive & negative) & distract you from the actual task. If someone else scans them it will take a small fraction of time, & you can write a narrative for whoever inherits them after you. 100 boxes is a lot of scanning.

I think it is important to figure out if there is a "customer" for thousands of images. I suspect that most of the image transferring that is going ion is wasted since the eventual heirs will simply not make any attempt to digest that many pictures.

It is interesting to me that the sheer volume of pictures taken may well condemn the important or significant ones to obscurity.

 

[Jeb-NY]

I have been going through the same process. Did my in-laws years ago when MIL was still alive. We setup a viewing party and I scanned as we went when anyone in the family did a thumbs up. Did a pass through some of my parents slides when they were both alive the same way. At the time I had an adapter for a digital camera to copy slides. Not super high resolution but adequate for most uses.

I have now made a first pass through the rest of my Dad's slides and scanned them with one of the Kodak scanners and doing a second pass at the in-laws for any we might have missed. Then I will start my own. I am throwing out any that have no meaning to me or the rest of the family. Mostly vacation shots without people, flower pictures, etc. I probably got rid of 80% of my Dad's slides in the sorting and I started with 4K-5K slides. What I then did that may or not be a good idea is I'm sorting them in to categories as best I can and keeping the originals just in case scanning technology makes a big leap forward or a need to rescan at higher resolution is needed for a few slides.

I am not storing in bulky trays but using storage boxes that are compact. For those with broke Kodak Carousel Projectors there are sources of the most common parts that go bad and places that will repair them for you if you're not handy. I fixed one of the 4 I had and bought parts for a second just in case. Threw one away as not repairable.

Then I start on about 8 boxes of photos that I have done one pass to sort in categories.

 

[Sunset]

Here is the one that I got. I am very satisfied with this scanner:

https://www.amazon.com/Plustek-Opti...B07K2GCRRY,B009PHCWL4,B08TMTXSY1&srpt=SCANNER

The automatic removal of marks sounds really great.

How long does it take to scan slides and is the mark/scratch removal automatic or a separate step later ?

 

[albireo13]

I have a Canoscan 9000f Mark II flatbed scanner I have been using for prints so far. I will try doing slides on it and seeing how long that takes. If the time/slide isn't bad I may stick with that. TBD. I will try today and make a call on it.

 

[sengsational]

Although this is a slide scanning thread, the comments about using a flatbed scanner might deserve a comment.... For packets of prints, productivity can be increased about 20 fold+ using something like an Epson FF 640 or equivalent. You drop a roll's worth of prints in, press a button and it scans them all faster than it takes to write down the date and subject. It even scans the back if there is contrasty content (writing).

 

[albireo13]

That FF640 looks neat. Looks like max res is 300dpi though. I like to do 600dpi for my 6x4 prints.

 

[albireo13]

The automatic removal of marks sounds really great.

How long does it take to scan slides and is the mark/scratch removal automatic or a separate step later ?

Yes, I'd also like to know how long it takes to scan slides with this?

As I stare at my Dad's boxes of old slides, I am making scanning time, and lack of fuss for each slide, a high priority.
Sending them out to be scanned is off the table. Even after thinning them out, I'd need a bank loan to have them scanned. LOL

 

[sengsational]

That FF640 looks neat. Looks like max res is 300dpi though. I like to do 600dpi for my 6x4 prints.

If you ever want zoom and crop, that's probably wise. I backed-off on that requirement. For me, at 300dpi, it must shrink slightly to fit a 1080x1920 screen...good enough for who it's for What I found enlightening was that examining the paper photo with good lighting was not nearly as detailed as looking at the photo on the HD resolution computer screen after I'd scanned it at 300dpi. But zooming capability was of limited use. I'd do some testing and if you see film grain, you've probably gone too far. Back in the day, we didn't take pictures with super high quality cameras and didn't use super high quality photo finishing, so 300dpi didn't leave much behind, but people who really took that stuff seriously, that might not be the case.

 

[sengsational]

Here is the one that I got. I am very satisfied with this scanner:

https://www.amazon.com/Plustek-OpticFilm-8200i-SE-Scanner/dp/B008ASJ2Z8/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=slide+scanner&qid=1637026614&qsid=131-9390834-3893804&s=electronics&sr=1-11&sres=B084NVRHYQ%2CB07JJBGG1D%2CB00O2BU8PK%2CB086DX4253%2CB01GHKL7HQ%2CB088D2GD31%2CB002OEBMRU%2CB008ASJ2Z8%2CB009724JZY%2CB0781FWMGZ%2CB07ZXZRR24%2CB07MJH6H1Q%2CB07MTKNTPK%2CB08TMSV4X8%2CB087Y81XV2%2CB077DBVRM7%2CB093B59MGM%2CB07K2GCRRY%2CB009PHCWL4%2CB08TMTXSY1&srpt=SCANNER

Yes, I'd also like to know how long it takes to scan slides with this?

I did a lot of shopping on Amazon before I went with the "camera" technology over the "scan" technology. There were many solutions that got great resolution, but they all used the scanner technology. The Plustek is scanner technology, so slow, about 2 minutes per slide, according to an Amazon Q/A. Devices that use the camera technology take just a second or two...basically as fast as you can position the slide. It would seem possible that there could be a higher resolution camera technology device possible (not the 'fake' 21MP of the Scanza), but I didn't see one.

 

[albireo13]

The native res of the Scanza is 14MP I believe. That amounts to about 1940dpi I believe. A bit on the low side for slides. Hmm .....

I'll take a look again at using 300dpi for 4x6 prints. My original thought was to allow for some enlargement, if wanted.

 

[Sunset]

Although this is a slide scanning thread, the comments about using a flatbed scanner might deserve a comment.... For packets of prints, productivity can be increased about 20 fold+ using something like an Epson FF 640 or equivalent. You drop a roll's worth of prints in, press a button and it scans them all faster than it takes to write down the date and subject. It even scans the back if there is contrasty content (writing).

For my old photos, I put 2 or even 3 on the flatbed and scan them all into 1 image.
I just make sure that the combined images are related ( ie family picnic, etc) so it makes sense to view them together.
I use 300 dpi.

 

[NoEZmoney]

Google: Slide Scanner and you'll likely be directed to click on Amazon as they have a ton of cheap to expensive units. Also some home printers have a scan feature that you can scan slides. Epson used to have this (may still have it).
Some folks even use cell phones to digitize slides by placing slide on a bright backlit source.

Lots of ways to do it...google is your friend.

 

[DougJohnson]

When my dad died, he had a couple of thousand slides, I had about the same myself. I bought one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224699378087?epid=1201596580&hash=item34512069a7:g:rygAAOSwdr1hew5E
off eBay and scanned them myself. In total, it took about 6 weeks. The automatic slide feeder is a must. I could load in a box of slides and go do something else. It would jam occasionally so I would check back every hour or so.

The scanner did a great job. It was 4000 dpi and did a nice job of adjusting color and eliminating dust. Some slides needed more Photoshop work, but I only did that on the more interesting slides.

Afterwards, I sold it back on eBay for more than I paid.

-- Doug

 

[I am He]

I bought a Nikkor macro lens and duplicating tube.
I shoot the slide, with flash, against a white wall and it turns out pretty good.

 

[dcms]

Old Photos and Slides

Because i have taken photos for the last 60 years and been in the same area I am doing work with local archives for describing and locating scenes. I manage to put some of my photos into story sets that archives has found useful. I worked with indigenous peoples land claims and my photos taken decades ago of wonderful people long gone has been helpful for cultural centers collecting their histories.
I noticed postcards the other day that looked like home photos and I got to thinking, wouldn't it be cool to take a photo of Mom and Dad at the park 50 years ago and sell it as a postcard?

I might work on that this winter.

 

[leftcoastjayhawk]

I had hundreds of slides that I took from the late 60s on, plus more hundreds from my dad's photos from the 1930s and on. ( ..."Mama don't take my Kodachrome"...)


I went through them quickly just holding them up to a light and throwing those away that did not have a person in them (vacation photos of just scenery was not important to me and would not be important to our children) Then I sent the hundreds that were left (600+) off to Costco. They don't do the highest DPI of some of the services, but they were the least expensive for excellent quality when I did this about 18 months ago. Easy Peasy.


For the hundreds (thousands?) of print photos, we have we purchased a Plustek ePhoto Z300 vertical "drop through" scanner. (https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/apparel/rcxgs/tile._CB483369110_.gif) Just drop the print into the slot at the top, it scan the print in a second or two at 300 DPI (600 is available but much slower), and the print drops out the bottom. Easy Peasy also, except that my wife is in charge of that and does get caught up in reminiscing time... But no flatbed scanner effort (open, place, close, start computer scanner app... etc)



A cousin used a flatbed scanner with an automatic sheet feeder, but those are more costly. And we can give the Plustek away to children or relatives after we are done with it.



Now the real issue is how do you organize all these digital images! That's got to be a whole new thread. And likely a very long one.

 

[papaof2]

Two options:
1. digitize the slides yourself - even an old flatbed scanner with 1200dpi resolution may be adequate**
2. have them digitized commercially - about $0.50/each

** Check freecycle.org and the Free section of your local craigslist.com for people giving away slide scanners - there was one in the Atlanta area this month: a very nice Nikon slide scanner ;-)

 

[rayvt]

My Dad was a photography nut. We got boxes and boxes of slides and photos when they died. Several thousand or more. We skimmed through a few boxes. Pictures of landscapes, vacation photos, people we do not know, us as little kids, us at high-school graduations. Etc.

I asked my brothers if they were interested in any. Nobody was, not even me.

We threw them all away.

 

[sengsational]

Two options:

Plus, many more options Flatbed is too slow. Commercial is too expensive. Finding a free scanner? I wouldn't say that was a practical strategy. Finding a used one on eBay, yes. The scanner tech can be high quality, but soooo slow. Impractically slow for a big batch of old slides. The 'take a photo' tech, either using your own rig (camera) or a dedicated device, is quick and can be done at a quality that is probably as good as commercial. I see the commercial slide scanning business is on the way out.